Recently, local broadcast has been performed in a specific power saving level for users in an extremely limited area such as a supermarket, amusement park, or city hall. The local broadcast includes, for example, commodity descriptions and bargain information of a supermarket, attractions and operation information of an amusement park, and procedures and counter information of a city hall.
The local broadcast is performed by one seg broadcast on, for example, a small screen such as a mobile information terminal of terrestrial digital television broadcast using UHF band. The one seg is a mobile terminal digital/video and data broadcasting service in Japan. An idle channel that is not being used for general broadcast may be used as the channel for local broadcast in this case. Local broadcast may be easily introduced to broadcast in a local area because the local broadcast uses a specified low power and does not require a license to broadcast.
The target range of the local broadcast may be extremely narrow. Thus, a user may obtain very useful information although the area is only a local area.
A conventional broadcast receiver performs channel scanning to detect a broadcast wave receivable in an area, and then displays all the detected channels as a channel list.
FIG. 1 illustrates an example of a conventional channel list. In FIG. 1, the first item of the channel list indicates a folder of general broadcasts in Tokyo. The second item indicates a folder of general broadcasts in Saitama. The third item indicates a folder of a local broadcast that is conducted at 13:35:20, Feb. 10, 2007.
FIG. 1 indicates that the first item and the fifth item are checked in the channel list. The result of the channel scanning indicates that the general broadcast in Tokyo is receivable at the current position of the broadcast receiver. The channel list has a layered construction. When the first item is selected, a plurality of television broadcast channels is displayed as general broadcasts in Tokyo.
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2006-279593 discloses a technique in which a digital broadcast receiver selects all the receivable channels and specifies a broadcast area where the digital broadcast receivers is positioned based on area identification information and reception levels attached to each of the detected digital signals, and then the broadcast area information corresponding to the specified broadcast area is stored.
The local broadcast may provide a listener in a narrow local area with information that is limited but effective. Therefore, if a user can receive the local broadcast in an arbitrary place, the user may find distinguishing between the local broadcast and the general broadcast more convenient. Furthermore, the user may recognize what the information receivable by the local broadcast is like and may clearly decide which information to use.
Accordingly, the general broadcast and the local broadcast are displayed in a mixed manner as a channel list in the conventional broadcast receiver. As a result, there has been a problem that it is difficult for a user to distinguish at a glance between the general broadcast and the local broadcast.